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Carr and Turnbull: Zygier case raises dual passport questions

TONY EASTLEY: The Foreign Minister Bob Carr says the case of Ben Zygier, the man known as "Prisoner X" who died in an Israeli prison in 2010, may raise some questions about dual nationals that need to be addressed.

Senator Carr has revealed he has offered to help resolve the diplomatic impasse over WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange if Sweden and the UK are interested.

The Minister's waiting for a report from his department about who knew what when. But in the interim…

BOB CARR: I think we've got to conclude that there is a special challenge in people who've got dual nationality who go to work for a foreign government.

This could be an issue we've got to tease out.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Senator Carr on the ABC's "Q and A" last night.

Opposition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull was there too.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think we need to ask the question, should we be issuing Australian passports to people who are Australian citizens - multiple passports, as it turns out - when they are working for a foreign government and indeed a foreign secret intelligence service.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The two former journalists had a little Q and A of their own.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Did Mr Zygier or his family request consular assistance?

BOB CARR: The best advice I've got is they didn't and that the family nonetheless had access to him on a large number of occasions.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Both have strong views about the case of another Australian, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who's been in Ecuador's embassy in London for the past eight months.

Bob Carr says he's offered to help break the impasse.

BOB CARR: I've told the British and I've told the Swedes that if they want a diplomatic solution to this, we would be happy to help in London. But in the meantime, it's got the status of a legal dispute in which we have no standing.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: And the advice that he gave back to me - which I might say is consistent with my own conclusions - was that he was under no more- he was no more susceptible being extradited from Sweden than he was from the UK.

I'd say this, that Julian Assange I think would have been much better advised if he had actually gone to Sweden and got this thing dealt with.

BOB CARR: Julian Assange could have been the subject of extradition action from the United States any time in the last two years, when he's been residing in the UK.

He wasn't.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Bob Carr says Australian officials have made representations to Sweden three times this month about treating Mr Assange with due process, pointing out Sweden has said it never extradites anyone on military or intelligence related matters.

BOB CARR: That's why there are draft resistors who are still living in Sweden, decades after evacuating the United States during the Vietnam War. If the Swedes had him in Stockholm, he'd be even more harder for the US to extradite, if that's what they want to do, than he's been for the last two years in the United Kingdom.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I can't think of anyone in the world today who is keener to climb up on the cross and be martyred than Julian Assange.

From the Archives

Around 500 Indigenous people fought in the First World War, and as many as 5,000 in the second. But many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diggers who made it home received little or no recognition for their contribution. On Anzac Day, 2007, the first parade to commemorate their efforts and bravery was held in Sydney. Listen to our report from that day by Lindy Kerin.